I’m not on testing, but that terminus problem seems to be pretty annoying. It’s my main font for urxvt, and I’d like to know if renaming is enough, while keeping in mind that the name might change again soon.
Reading the Arch forum thread, the problem remains for urxvt even after renaming.

In case this gets pushed to stable without fixes, should I hold the update back? Terminus is vital for me (and my eyes).

After recent upadate Terminus font name changed to 'xos4 Terminus'. It was intended by freetype2 developers, but it is a bit inconvenient to change user config files in order to use the new font name. I suggest using fontconfig alias feature to "fix" it. Create a file /etc/fonts/conf.avail/33-TerminusPcfFont.conf (or any other name) with following content:
<?xml version="1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE fontconfig SYSTEM "fonts.dtd">
<fontconfig>
<!-- Fix the name of Terminus font -->
<alias>
<family>T…

This update is tranquil.
It is stable.
Can be released this week in stable repository.
In Arch Linux Kernel LTS 4.4.x the system does not lock and is very stable already at the Manjaro there are some complaints in groups brazilians. It has already led some people to switch operating system.
I do not use the version 4.4.x LTS at the Manjaro because of that. If necessary I can create a topic about this after.

Can you post the today’s part of /par/log/pacman.log, please?
If you find time you can runjournalctl > journal.txt
search the time after the broken update and post from there up to the time of the downgrade.